In the United States, where I have spent many a Christmas, the two perennial theatre offers were the Tchaikovsky two-act ballet, THE NUTCRACKER, at the Opera House, and a play adaption of Charles Dickens', A CHRISTMAS CAROL. I have seen several different versions of the Dickens novella staged, and the two at the American Conservatory Theatre (ACT), in San Francisco, umpteen times - it has become a cultural tradition at the ACT, with generations of family going every year - it is a certain box-office bonanza for that company. The Guthrie Theatre in Minneapolis, is this year, presenting it for the fortieth consecutive year!

There are many film versions: the 1951, SCROOGE (known in the USA as, A CHRISTMAS CAROL) with Alastair Sims, regarded as the best, by many; the Jim Carrey/Disney version (2OO9), a respectable alternative; while we can choose as well to watch with the assistance of our new media technologies: A JETSON CHRISTMAS (1985), BLACKADDER'S CHRISTMAS (1988), THE MUPPET CHRISTMAS CAROL (1992), with Michael Caine as Scrooge, a SESAME STREET, CHRISTMAS CAROL (2006), with Oscar the Grouch, as Scrooge, a DOCTOR WHO: A CHRISTMAS CAROL (2010), and another starring THE SMURFS (2013). Of course, knowing a hit-cult figure, Walt Disney, created Donald Duck's irascible Uncle Scrooge, with the traits of the Dickens' hero hilariously promulgated and thwarted; and the Looney Tune creators have two versions of their own, one of them starring Yosemite Sam as Scrooge! The first filmed version goes back to SCROOGE, or MARLEY'S GHOST, filmed in Great Britain in 1901. Someone out there loves this story, no matter who is telling it and how - there is even a recent fashionable Zombie themed version!

Written in 1843 by Charles Dickens, in only six weeks, and sell published, it is a work that strikes the sentiments of all who engage with it. It has become the favourite Christmas story for over 171 years.

It is the story of Ebenezer Scrooge (Robert Menzies), a successful but miserly London business man, who after a typical day of practising an acquired skill of anti-social capitalism to all and sundry, stranger and family, is haunted on Christmas Eve by the ghost of his long deceased partner-in-business, Jacob Marley (Peter Carroll), who has been condemned to drag the heavy chains of 'his crimes', for all time. Marley gives warning to Scrooge that this, too, will be his fate, unless he heeds the scenes that the Ghost of Christmas Past (Ivan Donato), the Ghost of Christmas Present (Kate Box), and the Ghost of Christmas Future will show him.

Biographer, Peter Ackroyd, suggests that, as a result of childhood sufferings, Dickens had a preoccupation with money and it was…

only in fiction such as A CHRISTMAS CAROL that it came to the fore. Miserliness as vice. Generosity as virtue. How people obtain money. How people exert power over others because of money. How money can be an aspect of cruelty. How money can destroy a family. How the want of money is oppressive. How the greed for it is a form of unworthiness, a form of human alienation. And, central to A CHRISTMAS CAROL, how the experiences of childhood can lead ineluctably to miserliness itself. [1]

Co-adaptor Benedict Hardie, says:

At the centre of A CHRISTMAS CAROL is a man who has suffered neglect, failed at love, sought to avoid pain, and hardened into an indelible archetype. We tend to think of Ebenezer Scrooge in his capacity as miser par excellence and nothing more, but the full story encourages us to understand his journey; how he became who he is, and the obstacles he needs to overcome to attain salvation. [2]

Belvoir has succeeded well with this production. It is blessed with a casting of eight actors with an exuberance and empathy to tell this story - a more perfect set of actors to create this telling of the story to be a joyous and tear inducing experience would be hard to find: Kate Box, Peter Carroll, Ivan Donato, Eden Falk, Robert Menzies, Steve Rogers, Miranda Tapsell, and Ursula Yovich. I understand that they have had a genuine contribution in the fashioning of this text and production, finding themselves inspired directly from the original novella, which they returned to during rehearsals, more often than not. Anne-Louise Sarks, Director and co-adaptor, tells us of their "generosity and humour." It shows, glowingly.

Mr Menzies, as Scrooge, creates a character of experiential truth throughout the arc of the journey of the story, and captures the pathos beating in the Dickensian original, for our stage, with real insight and ownership - have I seen him better? Not for some time, I reckon. It is a totally winning performance. Ms Box is the most joyous, warm hearted, innocent and rambunctiously witty Ghost of Christmas Present that you will probably ever see. A blithe spirit indeed, at one stage, scoffing as much food as possible at the Cratchit Christmas table invisibly, and unnoticed by all, but us, for our amusement - assisted, by the way, with a wonderful cheeky costume by Mel Page. Whilst, Steve Rodgers serves up an immaculate Bob Crachit, capturing his basic human goodness and patient good humour, under stress at the office with Scrooge, and in his joy with his family: wife, children,and especially with sickly but 'divine', Tiny Tim (Ms Tapsell).

The eight actors people the entire play population impeccably, with multiple role playing, incorporating miraculous costume changes, that become a subliminal source of extra wonder for those of us who know more about the technicalities of production than others in the beguiled audience. The hard work of the performance tasks in this production are hidden in the benign presence, from all, of wanting to share the Christmas spirit of this tale with all of us. "God Bless Us, Every One!"

The Set Design, by Michael Hankin, a black raked raised floor, with a central oblong floor piece that raises to be a bed, falls to be a grave, surrounded by other trapdoors that reveal surprise after surprise, with a seeming never ending fall of snow, is a 'magic' conception. Whilst the Costuming by Mel Page in quasi-contemporary inspirations, give an impression of all times, gloriously imagined and 'miraculously' constructed for the ease of the company in its many duties. The Lighting design by Benjamin Cisterne, has narrative sense and beautiful effects. Much of the belief systems triggered in us for this production has been wrapped in the Sound Composition and Design by Stefan Gregory.

Ms Sarks and her team have achieved much to please us. The ensemble have created and play within a deep respect for the original work and its social environs and conventions, speaking in a contemporary Australian-English that never draws attention to its adaptive choices. As well, the actors shy not away from the sentiment of the characters and the events of the story: the belief in the supernatural is not 'camped-up', the human frailties and joys not overtipped into sentimentality - it all has the appearance of truths brusquely embraced with an open sense of affectionate humour with no actorly or directed self-indulgence or comment. This production, maybe, was the best experience of this story that I have ever had.

The Belvoir foyer and Upstairs Theatre had the buzz, feel, of an excited and rapturous audience, that, for me, recalled days of yore, when this company was, always, a reason to love theatre as a craft and art. The return to form by the Belvoir Company with a uniquely Australian production of A CHRISTMAS CAROL was a very welcome Christmas gift. More of this and one may excuse, perhaps, Ms Sarks for her NORA, earlier this year.

Friday, December 26, 2014

Sport For Jove present, THE CRUCIBLE, by Arthur Miller, as part of the 6th annual Sydney Hills Shakespeare in the Park and Leura Shakespeare Festival, at Bella Vista Farm. December 5 - 30. January 10 -25, at Leura Everglades.

From THE CRUCIBLE:

But you must understand, Sir, that a man is either with this court or he must be counted against it, there be no road between. This is a sharp time, a precise time - we live no longer in the dusky afternoon when evil mixed itself with good and befuddled the world. Now, by God's grace, the shining sun is up, and them that fear not the light will surely praise it. I hope that you be one of those. (Act Three. Danforth)

Sitting in the old wooden 'barn', one of the heritage buildings, situated on the farm of Bella Vista, it was an enthralling experience to watch Sport For Jove's atmospheric production of Arthur Miller's great play, THE CRUCIBLE (1953). But, it was with the above speech given by the character, Deputy Governor Danforth, overseer to the trials in Salem of 1692, that one was jolted (I was) out of the relatively safe theatrical mode of watching a contrived 'faction' unravel at a literary distance, and to have one's heart quickened to a sense of the relevance of this work, a work living in this company of actors, in our very presence, wracking our every sense with titanic contemporary parallels, compounding for most of us, after the Martin Place siege, and the recent release of the CIA torture documents in the USA, the dread of living in our own days, in 2014. This production, Directed by Damien Ryan, realises the mighty potential of this formidable monument of Dramatic Literature, and shakes us to the core of our morality, our recently heightened knowledge of our own mortality, to challenge us, with speed, to examine our ethical beliefs, and how they fit our daily actions.

THE CRUCIBLE by Arthur Miller, written after a visit to Salem, Massachusetts, and his reading of the archive records of the witch-hunt, seemed to have found the parallels that were eerily precise to the hearings of the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), happening at the time in Washington. From Christopher Bigsby's biography called ARTHUR MILLER:

In both 1692 and 1952 confession and betrayal were the necessary price for inclusion in the body politic. The purging of supposed private guilt was a required public gesture. The Devil was abroad, and salvation lay in informing. Friends and neighbours were to offer one another up if their own innocence was to be affirmed." [1]

The parallels drawn in Marion Starkey's book, THE DEVIL IN MASSACHUSETTS (1949), which Miller had read, gave him further impetus to write the play. Driven, besides, by the imbroglio of his personal affairs: the involvement of friends and colleagues in the HUAC 'trials', Elia Kazan, Clifford Odets and Lee J. Cobb, for instance; and his personal relationship with Marilyn Monroe (Abigail Williams?) and, his wife, Mary Slattery (Elizabeth Proctor?), the play takes on an urgency and necessity of great creative/psychological forces.

What is amazingly affecting with this Sport For Jove production is the committed passion that the entire company give to this play. Not only in the intellectual integrity and insight of the conception of the production, and virtuosic staging, on a three-sided stage, by Mr Ryan (do read his program notes), but, also, with the visual interpretations and application of imaginative skills in fitting the 'look' of the production to the rural circumstances of the particulars of the Bella Vista environs by Designer Anna Gardiner, both, with Setting and quasi-period Costume solutions of convincing acumen, and the subtle atmospherics of the Lighting by Sian James-Holland - no small feat in this 'outdoor' challenge. The Sound Design, from David Stalley is also a marvel to, retrospectively, apprehend.

Says Mr Ryan in his program notes:

The Rights Agreement available to us from the Miller estate does not allow us to even consider the updating or contemporizing of the play's setting or events, but hopefully we don't need to. I have felt no desire to. It is already a contemporary play, deliberately set in a highly specific historical context and asking the audience to find the parallels and reflections themselves. ...

I hope it was not just the Rights Agreement that gave him pause. To re-assure Mr Ryan, there was, indeed, no need. A great play never needs 'updating or contemporizing' to be made relevant for an audience, I think. That is why it is a 'classic' - it exists, itself, still, as a relevant 'document' of our humanity, no matter the time it is re-created. It was, and is, on its own merits, for all times! One just needs to work harder with the source material, and its interpreters, to realise that - to put the talent selected to bring it to life in a crucible, and direct the 'heat' of craft-rigour and inspiration to burn away the 'fat' of the distractions of the text, to reveal the 'heart-muscle' of the literary work. Sport For Jove has earlier demonstrated that understanding with its recent production of Ibsen's A DOLL'S HOUSE. I, personally, wish that this Company was just as brave with its Shakespeare as well. The Play is the Thing. The visual or verbal choices/obfuscations, of some contemporary production, can be, a little condescending to the intelligence of the audience, and has a tendency to 'dumb-down' the inspiration, the impulse, of why one wishes to produce or experience the play. There was, I presume, when the artists first read the black print on the white page, in finding the play to produce, no 'updating or contemporizing' choices communicating the feast of the play, just the plain, unadulterated text. Trust that text, and embody it as writ, I say. I beg. Lesser material, go for it. But why do lesser material with so much else available to try to bring to life?

Ms Schebesta and Mr Garner create a sexual heat and physical roughness of corrupting, convincing power, whilst Ms Adamson, the third point of the play's human triangle, is stalwart in her bewildered responses to her husband's betrayal, growing in status as the play unwinds its narrative. Mr Garner, develops the arc of his central responsibility as Proctor, skilfully, unleashing its full power of torn conscience and reason, to be mightily moving, in the last act of the play. Support from Mr Edgerton, Gooley and Ms Ridgeway is strong in the tasks that Mr Miller has given them. There is, as I have said, not a weak link - the detail and honesty of Mr Stalley in his, relatively, small task as the court documenter, Cheever, is indicative of the achievement of all.

I believe that the responsibility of the actor is basically three-fold:

To tell the story of the play.

To create character that we believe - to tell personalised truths, for us to identify and own, with them.

To reveal the language of the play - the joys, wonder of English.

So my carp, if I must have one, with this production, is that the word by word argument development of the characters in the play is often given as full-sentence emotionally sweeping generalisations, giving us, the audience, only, relatively, opaque gists of the narrative journey, and a clouded appreciation of the poetical writing of the language of the world and times that Mr Miller has, studiously created. There is great beauty in the language choice and construct in THE CRUCIBLE that is often swamped with the emotional imperative of this company (Robert Bolt's, A MAN FOR ALL SEASONS, and Stephen Jeffreys' THE LIBERTINE (brilliantly given by Sport For Jove, once upon a time) are other examples of studious anthropological creation of a language invention, of Shakespearean audacity). However, I venture, that it is true of all the writing of Mr Miller's work - and that it appears to be so naturalistic is its trap. DEATH OF A SALESMAN, is another instance, often, of the underestimation of Miller's writerly dexterity - for although the naturalistic 'appearance' is true, there is much poetry in the play prose of this great writer. It is why his plays stand as classic, for all the elements, narrative, character and language are part of his artistic tool-box, constant super structure. It is in the detail of the actor's craft, with the language verbalising, the objective-thought control of the artist with the word by word construct, that needs to be employed with rigour, and to deny, patiently and laboriously, the easy impulse to reveal the experience of the play with emotional indulgence, rather than in the clear logic of the language order, syntax and all, that will do credit to the 'genius' of the author. With that attention, I can assure, the latent humour, which is an important element in so weighty a moral allegory as THE CRUCIBLE, will be revealed, and will balance and enrich the experience of the play. Contrast and comic 'outlets' through the Miller ironic language underlining will undoubtedly deepen the affect of the play and production.

The famous production of this play for the Sydney Theatre Company, in1991, Directed by Richard Wherrett, was, and, for myself, is, proof of the benefit of such discipline. From the autobiography by Mr Wherrett, THE FLOOR OF HEAVEN:

The detail of (the) moments, moment built on moment, unit on unit, scene on scene, are what gives a performance the conviction of truth, the taste of belief, the illusion of reality: are what give it richness and texture. And while they should be the actor's responsibility-there is rarely enough time for the director to attend to every detailed moment in rehearsal-they still lie within the realm of the director-actor relationship. [2]

THE CRUCIBLE is Arthur Miller's most produced play, worldwide.

Miller's own speculations on the reasons for the play's longevity:

I have wondered if one of the reasons the play continues like this is its symbolic unleashing of the spectre of order's fragility. When certainties evaporate with each dawn, the unknowable is always around the corner. We know how much depends on mere trust and good faith and a certain respect for the human person, and how easily breached these are. And we know as well how close to the edge we live and how weak we really are and how quickly swept by fear the mass of us become ... It is also, I suppose, that the play reaffirms the ultimate power of courage and clarity of the mind whose ultimate fruit is liberty. [1]

Further to the Wherrett production:

At the end of one performance, a Saturday evening in July 1992 (a revival of the production from the year prior) John Howard as Proctor stepped forward and silenced the enthusiastic response. His speech was brief. He simply reminded the audience that three hundred years ago to the day, the sweet and dignified, wise and compassionate Rebecca Nurse had been hanged for witchcraft.The audience froze in horror. Perhaps not all of them were aware that the events of the play were true. But this quiet recollection of one tragic victim certainly jolted them into a chilling understanding of the facts. [2]

Our jolt and chill, at the Sport For Jove production, maybe, the psychic wounds, cast by the recent Martin Place tragedy, and the supposed deeply believed motivations of such an act.

Sport For Jove has given us another thrilling and pertinent theatre experience to absorb. An Independent Company with consistent quality achievements that deserves support from all areas. THE CRUCIBLE plays, in repertoire, with A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM, at Bella Vista, till the end of this month, and then at The Leura Everglades, for most of January, 2015.

Do go.

P.S.:

Before the play proper, Mr Ryan has created a prelude: an Installation/Set of Tableau vivant, of groupings of the denizens of Salem in the old farm house. It is startling in its capture of the claustrophobia of the zealotry of a Puritanical faith and the inner hostility that is bred with the 'violence' of such a proscriptive hegemonic way of life.

We catch through a window, a doorway, as we walked through the house, girls running off; we followed them, and from a distance, watched the slave woman, Tituba, lead the girls to an alternative way, celebration, of life, with semi-naked dancing, singing and whooping to a frenzied drumming, from the burdens of a fetid sexuality and natural exuberance for a life, groping for release from, it seemed, the human/animal needs of over-ripe lubricious young bodies, and spirits.

The deadly consequences of such indulgence we watched unleashed back in the barn as the play proper began.

Tuesday, December 16, 2014

Daniel Sparrow productions presents, RUPERT, by David Williamson, at the Theatre Royal, King St, Sydney, 28 November to 21 December, 2014.

David Williamson's RUPERT, is his 46th play (a 47th play, CRUISE CONTROL, premiered at the Ensemble Theatre this year). He has had, in fact, nine productions* of his work in Sydney, this year. A most prolific and well seen Australian playwright. Indeed.

RUPERT, the play had its origins, as a commissioned work from the Melbourne Theatre Company, under an invitation of the Artistic Director, Brett Sheedy, and premiered in late August, 2013, in Melbourne, and then travelled to Washington for the World Stages International Theatre Festival in March, 2014. It seemed the play could not find a theatre or co-producer in Sydney, and it looked as if it would not be seen here, at all. Then a London based producer Daniel Sparrow (of Australian origin) took it on, with a plan to transferring this new production to the West End and the UK.

In a two and a half hour stretch, a cast of 10 actors - playing some sixty characters, between them - present a tabloid-cabaret style review of the rise and fall (?) and life of Rupert Murdoch (there is some music and some dancing). It is, in the experience of it, a well written powerpoint resume of this life without, however, a penetrating point-of-view, or in-depth exploration of the psychological motivation. We come to understand that it is not money that interests this Rupert, but power and influence. That he has a ruthless pursuit of objective, uncomplicated by much personal need for the human foibles of the ordinary man.

David Williamson in his program notes tells us:

Brett (Sheedy) and I decided early on that whatever personal views I held on Rupert's world view, they shouldn't, as far as possible, influence the way the story is told. A left-wing playwright lacerating right-wing thinking has been a staple of theatre for so long now it's become predictable and predictability is the death of good theatre. ...

The play had to be about the character of Rupert much as his family and achievements. And what better way than to give Rupert the freedom to run his own show. A kind of Rupert Cabaret, in which he invites the audience to sit down and listen to the real story of his life, not the story peddled by lefty, inner city, latte sipping acai berry eating critics. Rupert stars in and has cast his own show. ...
Those arriving at the theatre hoping to find that the playwright has supplied a counter argument to every assertion that Rupert makes will be disappointed. This is Rupert's show. ...

There are two Ruperts in this play: the older played by James Cromwell, and the younger, played by Guy Edmonds, "who he admits might be a tad more charismatic and handsome than people remember him". The interaction between the two characters is easily enjoyed through the empathetic work of the two actors, with many skills, besides speculated tongue-in-cheek vaudeville technique. It is Mr Cromwell, playing the 'ring-master' Rupert, who anchors this production and play, magnificently. His authority, his presence, his elegance, his bristling intelligence, dominates the production, and us, the audience, effortlessly. The last time I watched the brilliant Mr Cromwell was at the American Conservatory Theatre (ACT) in San Francisco, where he played the older A.E. Houseman to a younger self, in the Tom Stoppard masterpiece, THE INVENTION OF LOVE. This play still not seen in Sydney, of course. What with a cast of 21 male and 1 female actor, and a complicated design demand, it is not likely to be considered by any of our major companies, no matter its theatrical brilliance Too, costly? Perhaps? Too, smart? Hmmm?

The rest of the population of this play is tackled by the other eight actors, whipping in and our of costume and wig, creating iconic walks, gestures and sounds to capture for our quick recognition the real life people that, in some cases have only flitted across our eyes in newsreels or documentary (they, sometimes, were having to shift scenery and properties, as well!): Danielle Cormack, Glenn Hazeldine, Jane Phelan, Bert LaBonte, Scott Sheridan, Haiha Lee, Jane Turner and Ben Wood. Scoring most often and hilariously is Mr Hazeldine and Mr Sheridan in some 14 incarnations each! The others have hits and misses. One wished that the Director, Lee Lewis, (or, Choreographer, Andrew Holdsworth) had spent more time with the actors in developing more that the shallow, cartoon outline of some of the impersonations, and had demanded, from these Australian actors, a more informed back-story and a cleaner, sharper vocal and physical edge to the work - it was sometimes a little ragged in detail and consistency.

TIME, of course, or the lack of it, is often the bane of the artists in preparing their work, and despite, which one it it may be in this particular - lack of it, I intuit - this production by Ms Lewis is a spectacular achievement, especially in its conception as a huge Brechtian hybrid of that playwright/director's (Bertolt Brecht) epic and cabaret invention. Stephen Curtis, the Set, Costume and AV Designer, has realised a huge task with practical nous and clean aesthetics - I note the, almost, trademark shades of black and white in the colour palate of Ms Lewis' vision. The Lighting, by Niklas Pajanti; and the work of Composer, Orchestrator and Sound Designer, Kelly Ryall, both re-enforce that vision.

For Mr Williamson there are, he has told us in interview, some resonances of the scale of Shakespeare's RICHARD III in the life of Rupert - not as physically bloody, of course - and the charm of both these inventions Richard and Rupert, carries us a long way, in each of their own opus, to non-judgementally enjoy their history. And, in the final moments of RUPERT, Mr Cromwell, Ms lewis and Mr Willliamson bring a thrilling, ominous chill to this relatively, lightweight telling of the life of one of the most powerful contemporary figures of influence and power, when this Rupert having led us superficially, but with charm and self-deprecating humour, through his life, steps down-stage, centre-,stage and leers out at us, in a final direct and complicit conversation, and concludes, that whatever has transpired, whatever the recent scandal of his existence that threatened his 'empire', that he is still here: "I AM STILL HERE. I AM STILL HERE." The memory of Brecht's creation, THE RISE AND FALL OF ARTURO UI, a parody of Adolf Hitler, leapt up, and out at me, and echoed the final sentiment of that work: "The bitch that bore him is in heat again." An ominous and sad warning, both. One left the theatre a little more sober than one may have felt when enjoying the interval refreshment.

Watching , again recently, the DVD of the National Theatre's celebration of its 50 years at work, one of the sequences had Ralph Fiennes playing a character, a South African media mogul called, Lambert Le Roux (originally, famously created by Anthony Hopkins), from David Hare and Howard Brenton's 1985 play, PRAVDA. It is a satire of journalism and particularly the media 'baron' Rupert Murdoch. It is a bracing, funny and fearsome work. It steps not back from the ugly of this world. Not seen in Sydney, of course, except at the National Institute of Dramatic Art (NIDA) directed, by Tony Knight, in its heyday, with Colin Moody showing his devastating promise for fearless confrontation in his work, even then. I wish, that now that we have had the relatively harmless sweetener, of Mr Williamson's RUPERT, one of the companies in Sydney could give us the bitter, but delicious pill of PRAVDA. Any chance? Anyone game enough?*The Williamson plays, in production this year:1. TRAVELLING NORTH (1979), The STC production.2. WHEN DAD MARRIED FURY, Parramatta Tour by HIT.The Jack Manning Trilogy, produced by the Ensemble Theatre at Chatswood.3. FACE TO FACE (2000)4. A CONVERSATION (2001)5. CHARITABLE INTENT (2001)

Sunday, December 14, 2014

An evening with Alan Ayckbourn is one that one can look forward too, generally, with anticipatory pleasure, and the Ensemble Theatre has taken a very sensible shine to presenting his challenging and comic work for us at least once a year - last year, NEIGHBOURHOOD WATCH - this season, it is ABSENT FRIENDS.

ABSENT FRIENDS written in 1974, is one of those comedies of his that shares the laser-like observational skill of Anton Chekhov, whilst wielding the doctorly scalpel of a "good doctor" with a withering psychological accuracy. If the accuracies cause 'blood' to spill for you, or not, will depend on what you are prepared to recognise about yourself, your relationships, and/or those of your friends about you. Whatever those exposures of truth for you may be, the audience I was with at the EnsembleTheatre the other night, found enormous opportunity for much laughter, and, as well, some anguished side-long glances at their partners and friends beside them.

A group of married friends, all, we will gather, unhappily married, have gathered to console one of their old friends, Colin (Darren Gilshenan), not married, but, in bereavement at the loss of his girlfriend, Carol. To offer this condolence to a friend of suspect respect, maybe a welcome distraction for these unhappy people from their own situation. As this night of emotional devastation unravels we may begin to admit that Colin is the lucky one, that fate has intervened, for if the marriages of his hosts are anything to go by, the death of his fiancee was a blessing in disguise.

Typical of Mr Ayckbourn, the lives of his lower middle class 'friends' are being crushed under the weight of disillusionment and the boredom of legal 'bondage' - marriage. A state that some anthropologists claim as unnatural, and Mr Ibsen has railed against, conventionally controversially, in such plays as A DOLL'S HOUSE. Diana (Michelle Doake) and Paul (Richard Sydenham) are in a precarious state of desperate emotional implosion - their wearied and silent acceptance of each other's faults and 'sins' weighing heavily on their existence. The mismatched temperaments of sulky and aggravated Evelyn (Jessica Sullivan), and bewildered, inadequate, cuckolded John (Brian Meegan) are an open sore of deliberate irritations - on stage, the pram with baby, a symbol of their entwined entrapping bond. Whilst Marge, (Queenie Van de Zandt) reveals her interdependence and fretful co-dependence with an invisible (offstage) hypochondriacal husband, Gordon, who may well be her baby substitute, as her marriage bonding, so far, as had no offspring - her helpfulness and preoccupations symptoms of distraction for other considerations. Into all of this comes Colin, an unctuous, blithely social myopic. Seeing nothing and no-one beyond his own experiences and wants, needs.

The world of this play is bleak, a middle class wasteland - illustrated well, by the purposely, 'naff' '70's Set Design and Costumes, by Anna Gardiner (Costume co-ordinator, Catherine Capolupo) - but for all that, too humanely observed and so cleverly explicated by Mr Ayckbourn, that laughter becomes a sedative to our growing anxiety for these people, a kind of healing balm for all of us in the audience. We, after, may question why we laughed, but laugh we did, and laugh you shall, despite yourself.

Mr Gilshenan, as Colin, reveals the right balance of bon-homie, of a man with the unconscious smugness of good fortune to be, still, a single man, and because of his tragedy (Carol's drowning) the centre of empathetic attention; Mr Meegan finding the idiosyncratic ticks of a socially 'drowning' man, impressing, as he did in NEIGHBOURHOOD WATCH, last year, with his skills and clear insight into the world of Mr Ayckbourn's intentions; and Ms Van De Zandt, a triumph of pathos and comic 'covers' giving the most satisfactory performance on the stage with all of her crafted comic business, and deep well of owned emotional grief for the life of Marge - tender, clever, beautifully sustained.

Director, Mark Kilmurry, tends to overreach the comic direction of Mr Ayckbourn's play, in this naturalistic, observational comedy, by directing, the usually assured Ms Doake, and consequently, Mr Sydenham, into overstated emotional farce - the whooping cry of Diana, and prolonged laughter-hysteria of Paul, too much for comfortable belief and acceptance. The psychological underpinnings and the social structure of the work requires more Chekhov and less Durang, in approach. This work felt 'pushed', deliberately guided to hysteria, where comic grief, felt-fathoms of sadness, would be a better explication - motivated for both wife and husband from a true bottomless despair. Ms Sullivan is only superficially funny in each scene and seems to count on Mr Ayckbourn to do all her work for her, and does not help us understand Evelyn's unhappiness (her motivational subtext), or why she bears it out, it seems, to the edge of a cold-blooded doom - she just does.

Mr Ayckbourn's ABSENT FRIENDS, though written 40 years ago, is pathetically relevant, and enhances undoubtedly, the growing reputation of this still living and prolific playwright, as a timeless master. Like his friend and mutual admirer, Harold Pinter, a genius of classic invention and human sympathy.

TELL ME AGAIN by Jeanette Cronin is a new Australian play. It chronicles the relationship between Her (Jeanette Cronin) and Him (James Lugton). It is written in many, many short scenes (some, merely seconds long!) and in a cryptic, elliptical manner. In the program notes we read:

What if Memory and Dream fell in love, and left you stranded in a vortex of uncertainty, spiked with just enough clues to drag you deeper into corridors of familiar doors with no handles.

And, yes, there is, often, in this work, some tantalising familiarity of relationship 'dropped' for us - we do recognise some things: the corridors and the absence of handles to get out of them - in a higgledy-piggledy order. And, so, we attempt, while watching and listening, to impose order, in a kind of bewildered, but not irritated state, on what we are watching and hearing to decipher what is fact, what is fiction. We try to fit pieces of the puzzle into the jigsawed scene structure. Do we have the right pieces and are they from this puzzle? It is a pleasure to try to sort it out.

The writing by first time play author, Jeanette Cronin, is fascinating, and has the literary echoes, for me, of Harold Pinter (The Lover, Old Times etc) and Edward Albee (Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Tiny Alice etc.) - two authors not to be blinked at and, to boot, gorgeous to listen to. So, also, here, thanks Ms Cronin. Add, to the creativity, staging by Michael Pigott (moonlighting, whilst performing in the STC, CYRANO DE BERGERAC - how does he do it?) and there is a visual coding/cluing, I think, of some highly sophisticated choreography going on - the taking off and putting on of clothing, all part of it. The production is further enhanced by some beautiful Lighting (especially for this tiny space) and Sound Design (no accreditation made, except that of Mr Pigott as Production Designer.)

Topping this are the two very arresting performances, with Jeanette Cronin, gliding, galloping, through the hoops of her own writerly obstacles with a kind of assured and secure rapture of absolute confidence for what is happening and where and when it is happening (as the writer of the play ought to be, I suppose) whilst Mr Lugton gives one of those truly centred and collected performances - a contrasted match for all the brittle emotions of his stage partner.

Do I know what was going on? Maybe. Did I find the doubts, confusion , a hindrance to the sixty minute occupation of my time? No, definitely not.

Welcome, to Ms Cronin's other talent as a writer. One hopes it is not the last time we witness it. We have known her acting talent for some time and, nearly, always, are grateful for having been gifted it.

Saturday, December 6, 2014

Don't Look Away with AAI and Seymour Centre present, THE LEGEND OF KING O'MALLEY, by Michael Boddy and Bob Ellis, in the Reginald Theatre, at the Seymour Centre, Chippendale. 26 Nov-13 Dec.

THE LEGEND OF KING O'MALLEY, was written by Michael Boddy and Bob Ellis, in 1970. This production comes from a Melbourne based company, Don't Look Away, that last year presented ROOTED, by Alex Buzo, both directed by Phil Rouse.

The play was written for NIDA/Jane St.

A synthesis from the history of NIDA, by John Clark: Jane St was an innovation set up by Robert Quentin (Professor), who had founded, with others, the National Institute of Dramatic Art (NIDA), in 1959, and then the professional theatre company known as The Old Tote Theatre Company, in 1963, both, on the campus of the New South Wales University. In the mid-sixties, Mr Quentin observed:

In Australia only a few plays from overseas are seen, and the long process of try-out adjustment and improvement by which their excellence was obtained is readily forgotten. Australian writers are often damned because they do not achieve in one step what overseas writers have accomplished in many. We must have a theatre whose aim is the development of work in progress, not immediate exploitation."[1]

He found a tiny chapel (church), and with a small grant from the Gulbenkian Foundation, up in a Jane St, near the horse racing sale yards on Barker St, Randwick (I think the building, now a private residence, still exists). He had it hastily painted, white, and with a seating capacity of 80, of old cinema seats, opened in July, 1966, with the Tony Morphett play, I'VE COME ABOUT THE ASSASSINATION. The plays were, generally, new Australian works performed by young NIDA graduates, members of the Advanced Course. John Clark writes:

The idea was to have a theatre where new Australian plays could be tried out at minimum cost. If they were poorly received, no harm was done; if successful they could be transferred to the Old Tote or to a commercial venue.[1]

In his account of this time, John Clark - an Australian theatre visionary and practitioner - on becoming Director of NIDA in 1969, (while Robin Lovejoy took the helm Of The Old Tote Theatre Company), with Elizabeth Butcher, describes how he…reactivated Jane Street and the annual seasons of new Australian plays became an important part of the theatrical calendar until the owners sold the building in 1981 (between 1966 and 1981, some 28 Australian plays were produced). ... In 1970 John Clark (of Tasmanian origin) read a biography of the legendary Australian politician, King O'Malley. He suggested to Michael Boddy (then teaching History of Theatre at NIDA) and John Bell (who had just recently returned to Australia, from the Royal Shakespeare Company, in the UK, and appointed Head of Acting, at NIDA, by John Clark), that there might be a play in O'Malley's story. Bob Ellis came in as a writer, and the play was hastily written (I remember several joke books, scattered around the rehearsal theatre space, which were being plundered for some of the act two parliamentary material) and rehearsed over two weeks. It opened at the Jane St Theatre on 11 June 1970, and moved to the Old Tote's Parade Theatre, at the end of their main season (where your's truly was dragooned, with fellow first year NIDA actors, as part of a marching troupe in a red one-piece costumed life-savers swim suit, with red and yellow striped cap, carrying a beach safety reel, across the back of the stage, in an expanded act one finale) and toured Australia for over a year (we, thankfully, didn't!)

The original company of actors were: William Yang, Rex Cramphorn, Nick Lathouris, Terry O'Brien, John Paramour, Robyn Nevin, David Cameron, Kate Fitzpatrick and Gillian Jones. John Bell Directed and Janet Dawson (Michael Boddy's, wife) with Sue Lloyd, Designed.The choreography by Keith Bain. It was as a result of this production that John Bell and Ken Horler founded the NImrod Theatre, in an old stables in Nimrod St, Kings Cross (now the home of the Griffin Theatre Co), and opened on December 2nd, 1970, with a show called, BIGGLES. The iconoclastic early work of Nimrod was greatly influenced by the O'Malley experience, and, in another artistic direction, several of this acting company, led by Rex Cramphorn, founded the Performance Syndicate, that explored, re-thought, the classic repertoire. THE LEGEND OF KING O'MALLEY, original production cohort is legendary for more than itself. It became the spring-source and energy for new Australian playwriting, and as an approach to the theatre craft of putting on a play, that became uniquely Australian. This 'revolution' in the performing arts, came on the cusp of great political change, with the election of Gough Whitlam, in 1971, which was to be a further game changing power to the ARTS.

The short development time of the original production was compensated by the talent and enthusiasms of the original artists. The production was conceived as a rough and ready, "shambling, rollicking entertainment, a fantasia on the exotic life of the Federal politician King O'Malley". [2] It is incredible to contemplate the 'wealth' of the talents involved in that O'MALLEY when one adds the memory of the performance preamble: Greeting the audience in the winter June evenings, were burning fires in ten-gallon metal barrels, and a group of young second year NIDA actors, costumed as hocus, (very feral) side show performers at a 'spiritual' tent gathering: a snake charmer with an actual python snake around her shoulders; a half-man/half woman; seedy clowns and a sexy, meet and greet MC. Some of the student actors being the likes of Pamela Stephenson, Vivienne Garrett, Wendy Hughes, John Hargreaves - who all became leaders in the performing arts, in the ,then, not to distant future.

So, for some of us, then, gathering, the other night, at the Seymour Centre, this play had that 'Golden Era' memory haze about it (true or otherwise) and was full of anticipatory anxiety as to how that 'flimsy' but influential, important, work was going to stand up. John Paramour, the original O"Malley was there, as was Bob Ellis, one of the writers. Lots of yarn-telling of the experience of this seminal work's debut was going on - and maybe , you would have had to have been up at Jane St, or down at the old Parade Theatre, in 1970, to appreciate the excitement of, and, about it. In 1970, it, confidently was, partly, that the possibility, of the dream of Louis Esson's National Theatre, an Australian Theatre, was at last, being born. (And that is not forgetting the influence of La Mama, in Carlton, Melbourne, as well.)

In the hush of the dingy Reginald foyer, being shared with another event in the room next door, we were let into the theatre, and on a stage with a painted striped tent backdrop (Designers, Daniel Harvey and Zoe Rouse), we were overwhelmed by a group of gospel singers in white shiny dress singing out, beating out, with a high octane energy, song, accompanied by an accomplished piano player, Tom Pitts, There was mic-amplified sound and it was overwhelming (Sound Design, Simon Moy), a little shattering. What was once, (ah, Golden era), a vaudevillian, music hall, burlesque rendition of a grubby spiritual tent meeting somewhere in the boon-docks of the US of A, at the turn of the last century (see, the evangelical tent meeting in the TV series, TRUE DETECTIVE, to get an image), was now a kind of glitzy American Broadway Musical Theatre piece in action (Sondheim's ASSASSINS, sprang to mind). It is a generational interpretation, of course, and Mr Pitts, has composed a whole new score (the original musical interludes, were mostly acappella, of traditional tunes e.g. Shall We Gather at the River etc, with tambourines), and it was a bit like watching the glitzy choices made by, Rob Marshall, in 2002 , for the film CHICAGO: a little more than over the top of the reality of the circumstances of the truths - either, the real life ones, or the original theatre production ones.

The energy of the performers, the slickness of this production: music, singing, choreography, acting. costume and setting, all good in themselves, was dominated by an overwhelming earnestness of tone, and lacked what I think is essential to O'MALLEY, irony. The ironic eye view, through the Australian 'lens' perspective, on the religious hokum, of O'Malley or, O'MALLEY, and that of his American 'brothers and sitters', plus the almost unbelievable events of his Act One life adventures in getting to Australia, was absent from this company's work. It was told with a wink-wink melodramatic flourish but not with the trademark Aussie tongue-in-cheek. Very, very Earnest, was it, all. The speed, and the Sound Designed Noise, of the production in that first half drowned out any real possibility of, audience-wise, getting on board, or even really comprehending what was going on. At the interval, the old guys and gals of yesterday-yore, were curiously asking, how much of the text had been 'tinkered' with, as they couldn't recognise the play that they, admittedly, distantly remembered - not much, if any (except the songs), at all. New comers to it were more than a little bewildered at what they were watching and were asking why THE LEGEND OF KING O'MALLEY held such an important place in Australian Theatre history.

The second act was better (still noisy - hey, guys, its a small venue!) The writing and the satire is more comprehensible in the playing - the mirror image of the O'Malley Federal Parliament behaviour for our present chaotic experience of the last five or six years in Canberra, could not be sharper. The issue of the personal conscience vote and the danger of exercising it in a 'party' dominated institution could not be more prophetic, in the demonstrated consequences incurred by King O'Malley, for our present independent politicians, and the 'party'-identities trapped. Still topical, then.

The company is simply listed in the program without role appellation and is: Oliver Coleman, James Cook, Brianagh Curran, Alex Duncan, Matt Hickey, Andrew Iles, Tara Rankine, Jess Tanner. All are enthusiastic and work very, very earnestly. with lots of energy perspiration going on.

Unfortunately, the legend of THE LEGEND OF KING O'MALLEY, and the honour of its place in the canonical history of Australian theatre, will not be explicated, for any who catch this production. Context, and the research to place it in a contextually meaningful manner for contemporary times, needs more contemplation, and, maybe, less physically committed effort- the laid-back energy of the Aussie larrikin of "she'll be right, mate" might be a helpful one to consider, as a contrasting tempo.

Sunday, November 30, 2014

Sydney Theatre Company (STC) and Colonial Trust First State Global Asset Management presents, CHILDREN OF THE SUN, by Maxim Gorky, in a new version by Andrew Upton, in the Drama Theatre, at the Sydney Opera House. 17 September - 18 October.

Look.

Dear Diary,

I did not have a good time with this production of CHILDREN OF THE SUN, at the Drama Theatre. It seemed to me to be more a play adapted from a Feydeau classic, than a play by Gorky. I can't decipher who is responsible, The Adaptor: Andrew Upton, or the Director, Kip Williams.

The best things were the look of the show: The Set Design, by David Fleischer. Especially, the Costume Design, by Renee Mulder. The Lighting Design, by Damien Cooper. This element of the production, the look, the image, is the element that the Director, Kip Williams, generally, is good at (sort of). Visual concept is his strength. Most else is subservient to that. It's a kind of Installation art with moving figures.

The only actor, for me, that survived the Directorial guidance was the amazing Justine Clarke, playing Yelena.

All else, a relative disaster.
I was going bonkers in my seat.

Read on, if you want.

It has taken six weeks to write and I do tend to rave on a bit. I'm sorry. It is only an expression of appreciative passion

During the Sydney Theatre Company's (STC) production of CHILDREN OF THE SUN, by Maxim Gorky, adapted by Andrew Upton, under commission, from the Royal National Theatre, London, in 2013, which has been further adapted by Andrew Upton for the STC - for reasons of economics, I presume, for despite the large grant that the STC company receives to support the Performing Artists on the stages, and the HUGE administration staff in their offices, the STC, under the Artistic Direction of Andrew Upton, to give the Sydney audience the opportunity to have this play, his latest playwriting, says he had to reduce 14 important roles (16 roles in the original) down to 12 - several of the characters cry out something like, "They are going bonkers." or "I am going bonkers." Well, during this production, Directed by Kip Williams, in the Drama Theatre at the Sydney Opera House, from my F Row seat, centre, I wanted to shout "I am going bonkers. You are making me f..king bonkers" (another vocab choice by the adaptor, Mr Upton, for a few of the characters, under stress, during the play's scenarios). "Help me!! Help me!!!", I internalised, not wanting to be rude, a disturbance. I was being driven CRAZY, MAD, BONKERS, by this production of CHILDREN OF THE SUN.

It seemed to me that I was watching a production of a Gorky play as if it was one of the early Chekhov one act vaudeville- sketch-cartoon-exagerrations, such as THE PROPOSAL, or THE BEAR (1888-9). There is a note in the program notes about the brief relationship between Gorky and Chekhov, but as writers their core intentions, are as different as chalk is to cheese. And so, although Maxim Gorky and Anton Chekhov knew each other, personally (briefly), their writing styles and objectives were very different, indeed. True, as another program essay, Becoming Gorky: Story Teller, Playwright, Activist, by Cynthia Marsh, tells us:

They were in conversation and correspondence during 1900 while Chekhov was writIng THREE SISTERS and Gorky was working on his first two plays. As a result, their plays engaged in a dialogue on the stage of the MAT (Moscow Art Theatre). Chekhov took some of Gorky's ideas to task in THREE SISTERS (1901). He then responded to the answers Gorky gave in THE LOWER DEPTHS (1902), in his own final play THE CHERRY ORCHARD of 1904. Gorky's SUMMERFOLK, later in 1904, begins where Chekhov finishes. [1]

I believe the style of the writing comes from two different urges. One was dominated with gentle, humanist, ironic observation, that is the Chekhov; the other by blatant Marxist Social Realism, with a deliberate political agenda, that is the Gorky. In fact Vladimir Nemirovitch-Dantchenko in his memoir "My Life in the Russian Theatre" notes that the first production of THE CHILDREN OF THE SUN, in St Petersburg, "was unequivocally satirical, with little sympathy for the character(s)" and was unanimously condemned. [2]. And, this seems to be the playing tone taken by Mr Williams, flaunted for us, in this present production for the STC. Nemirovitch-Dantchenko elaborates:

However much the events of 1905 (Bloody Sunday) might have hardened (Gorky's) views, Gorky's initial conception of Protasov (for instance) was far more sympathetic. Originally, he planned to write a play called 'The Astronomer' in collaboration with Leonid Andreev (another Russian writer of the period.) It owed its inspiration to the words of the German astronomer, Herman Klein (1884-1914) : "When Raphael was painting his Sistine Madonna, when Newton was contemplating the law of gravity, when Spinoza was writing his Ethics and Goethe his Faust, the sun was at work on all of them. All of us, geniuses and mere mortals, strong and weak, emperors and beggars, all of us are children of the sun." [2]

Protasov was conceived to be played as a visionary akin to other heroes in the MAT repertoire of the time, with the subtle heroics of Stockman from Ibsen's AN ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE (1882) or Astrov, in UNCLE VANYA." Not, as both Mr Upton and Mr Williams seem to believe, that the children of the sun are "a group of over-indulged kidults." That Protassov is a 'kidult'!? Gorky had much more regard for mankind and saw them, all, as individuals pursuing their idealistic and/or needful passions, under the sun, that nurtures/blinds us all, all equally.

So, I thought I was going BONKERS, in the Opera House.

Alexi Maximovich Peshkov was born in 1868 into a family with a small cloth-dying business, who had a prior history as barge-towers on the Volga river. Unlike Chekhov, who was born in 1860, into a bourgeois family whose father was a grocer, and whose antecedents had been serfs on the land - they had bought their freedom. In 1879, Maxim became an orphan and was brought up by a violently abusive grandfather, and doting grandmother. Unlike Anton, who had a violent father but a loving mother, and siblings: a devoted sister (Masha) and two brothers. Both men had life confrontations: in 1887, Maxim attempted suicide, with a gun. In 1885-6 Anton was diagnosed with tuberculosis - he virtually, kept it a secret. Maxim spent 5 years trudging through the lower world of the Russian Empire, taking on many varied jobs. Unlike Anton who graduated from university as a doctor. Maxim became a journalist for regional newspapers, reporting on the inequities of Russian life from the bottom strata of society, graduating to a collection of ESSAYS AND STORIES (1898), which he wrote less as an aesthetic practice than as a moral and political act. Unlike Anton, who began writing comic sketches and short stories of fiction for profit and public entertainments, to support himself and his family. Alexi Maximovitch Peshkov adopted the pseudonym of Maxim Gorky, 'gorky' meaning, bitter (sometimes translated as grief). Unlike Anton Pavlovitch Chekhov who became famous, simply, as Anton Chekhov. Gorky aligned himself politically with the Marxist Socialist-Democratic movement and was jailed or exiled for his political agitation, often. Unlike Anton Chekhov who did not, publicly, affiliate with any political movement and suffered no jail term or persecution. Maxim Gorky wrote novels, short stories and plays in the socialist realist method as a political activist. Unlike Chekhov, who, while abhorring the social and political conditions of his country, wrote observational stories of the human condition and became more pre-occupied with writing as a stylist than a social activist - perhaps, the greatest writer of short stories - and an innovator of the play form and characterisation along with, Nemirovitch-Dantchenko and Stanislavsky, at the Moscow Art Theatre.

Gorky did have his first plays produced under the aegis of the Moscow Art Theatre (MAT): THE PHILISTINES or SMUG PEOPLE (1901), THE LOWER DEPTHS (1902) and SUMMERFOLK (1904), after an introduction from Anton Chekhov to Vladimir Nemirovitch-Dantchenko and, subsequently, Konstantin Stanislavsky. Chekhov wrote, particularly, for the MAT company of actors: UNCLE VANYA (1899), THREE SISTERS (1901) and THE CHERRY ORCHARD (1904). Chekhov died in 1904, six months after the premiere of THE CHERRY ORCHARD - he never witnessed revolution, only gathering unrest. Maxim Gorky lived until 1938 and was witness and participant in both the revolutions - 1905 and 1917 - becoming a comrade to both Lenin and Stalin. Chekhov had a doctor's empathetic view of his fellow citizens. Gorky had a revolutionist's assertiveness, urging his fellow citizens for change, to change - even using violent change. Chekhov with his diagnosed illness was unsure of his future and seemed to embrace the irony of the life/death cycle as a humanist, some might say, near sentimentalist. Gorky fired by political ideology envisaged a sure future that he could be part of, and embraced in his writings and actions, the 'handbooks' of revolution. Chekhov came to observe life, Gorky participated and shaped life. Chekhov is remembered as a writer, a great writer. Some believe, it is Gorky the Man, defined by his political activities in the pre- and post-revolution eras, that is more impressive, than Gorky the Writer, and the reason for his longevity in history.

Gorky, in 1905, had become disaffected from the Moscow Art Theatre (MAT), after disagreements with Nemirovitch-Dantchenko, and gave the premiere performance of THE CHILDREN OF THE SUN, to Vera Komissarzhevskaya (the first Nina in THE SEAGULL) and her company at the Aleksandrinsky Theatre, St Petersburg. Gorky had written it while a political prisoner in the notorious Peter and Paul Fortress, as a result of his "drafted proclamation condemning Nicholas II as a murderer and calling for 'a struggle against the autocracy'" [2] following the Tsarist's troops slaughter of demonstrators at the infamous Bloody Sunday rally, in January, 1905 - almost a year before the first aborted revolution. The play opened in St Petersburg twelve days before the Moscow production, which was given "only on the assurance that Nemirovitch-Dantchenko would be restrained from distorting the text." [2] Gorky had, in fact, lost interest with the play and was now concerned deeply with the revolutionary mood of both cities. The populace were incensed when the Tsar proclaimed the Constitution on the 17th October and "it became clear that the reactionaries would never reconcile themselves with it and that the so-called "Black Hundreds would be let loose to do their worst." [2] The first performance, in Moscow, of THE CHILDREN OF THE SUN, was given on the 24th October, 1905. The Tsar's supporters saw the Moscow Art Theatre as a hot-bed of revolutionaries, epitomised by the writer Gorky, and the actual audience on that first night ended in panic and near riot when they mistook the staged protest conclusion of the last act of the play as a reality - it was perceived by a jittery audience that an actual take-over of the theatre/stage was taking place, with guns held by reactionaries, the so-called Black Hundreds:

The stage-manager's assistant had the curtain rung down. ... When calm was restored the performance continued, but the theatre had been emptied of more than half its audience. (It played, courageously, for a further 21 performances during that Autumn). The first revolution - the December revolution of 1905 - was approaching. The public stubbornly refrained from play-going. ... On December 11 we were rehearsing ... and made the most incredible exertions neither to hear nor give heed to the reports of occurrences in the Square of Triumph we went on rehearsing until shots were heard under the very windows of the theatre and the theatre yard was invaded. ... Then began the long gloomy days ... There was martial law ... The Art Theatre was silent. [2]

THE CHILDREN OF THE SUN disappeared from the repertoire.

The adaptation, by Andrew Upton, of Gorky's play for the Royal National Theatre (Faber and Faber - 2013) is aggressively contemporary in much of its language choices that more than occasionally jangles one's comprehension with its bold anachronisms.The tendency to satirise the characters instead of maintaining the Gorky empathy for these people is necessarily a modern lens fracture (as in a fractured fairy tale, perhaps!) that does not reveal Gorky's sensibilities and intentions. The further adaptation of the English version for this Australian production at the STC has, for instance, a conflation of three characters into one - thereby removing some of the children of the sun, the representatives of the local working class peasantry, who are as self-obssessed as the principal characters - they are all children of the sun, equally culpable in the eyes of Gorky. What is best in the adaptation, is the decision to overlap the dialogue. Thereby, Mr Upton's changes have a contemporary freshness that supersedes the verbal (and sometimes structural) heaviness of the 1973, Moura Budberg (one of Gorky's wives) published version, but, for me, does not quite have the clarity, fluency and Gorky intention, found in the Penguin 1988 version by Kitty Hunter-Blair and Jeremy Brooks, commissioned for the Royal Shakespeare Company.

In this production of Gorky/Upton's CHILDREN OF THE SUN, by Kip Williams, Helen Thomson, playing the desperately lost Melaniya, and Hamish Michael, playing the artist, Vageen, give outstanding performances. Both these actors, particularly, Ms Thomson, demonstrate their remarkable comic skills. Both, demonstrate almost incomparable clowning skills on this occasion. The audience I was with, found themselves laughing often, and loudly. However, both performances were, for me, a disaster of choice by these two actors and director, as they were exhibiting, demonstrating them in, altogether, the wrong play. If this were one of the burlesques of Chekhov: THE PROPOSAL or THE BEAR, for instance; or one of the more frantic Feydeau French farces, one of the one-acters e.g. BABY WON'T SHIT (1910), or, full length, A FLEA IN HER EAR (1906), or any contemporary farce: BOEING, BOEING, or a Franca Rame-Dario Fo, for example, nothing else could have been more appropriate, but not in THE CHILDREN OF THE SUN.

THE CHILDREN OF THE SUN is a play by Maxim Gorky, no matter any liberties taken by Mr Upton. Gorky's cannon of work is written in a serious social realist style. He is writing from close observation of the living world about him. Gorky wrote from a point-of-view that was empathetic to his fellow 'comrades' and, most importantly, from a lived comprehension for the given circumstances and motivations of his fellow citizens without judgement or satirical exaggeration. He was, rather, a super sensitive, observer, critic of the political and social circumstances that inhibited his fellow Russian citizens from experiencing justice and true liberty. He knew change must come.

His theatrical inspiration was the work of the contemporary Russian writers for the stage, Ostrovsky, (Tolstoy), and the early major Chekhov, and not from Gogol and his masterpiece, THE GOVERNMENT INSPECTOR (1836). Not in any of his plays : THE LOWER DEPTHS (1902) , SUMMERFOLK (1904), PHILISTINES (1905), ENEMIES (1906), VASSA ZHELEZNOVA (1910), or some of his other literature: THE MOTHER (1906); THE LIFE OF A USELESS MAN (1907); his autobiographies: MY CHILDHOOD (1913-14) ; MY APPRENTICESHIP (1916); MY UNIVERSITIES (1923); or FRAGMENTS FROM MY DIARY (1940) - published posthumously and translated by Moura Budberg - have I come across any figure of observation writ as boldly and cartoony as the two performances given by Ms Thomson and Mr Michael in this production of the Gorky play. Nor, any character, as childishly comic, as some of the other performances.

For, most of the other performances, in Mr Williams' production, too, tended to 'represent' the characters, instead of revealing investigated experiential truths of the given circumstances of these men and women of late eighteenth and early nineteenth century Russia. For, Gorky did not grow up and trudge the Russian Czardom and believe it was funny! He knew suffering, first hand. He knew pain, personally. He knew sorrow, personally. He knew injustice, personally. He knew of it from the core of his life experiences. And, the bigger picture of social and political movements of his past, and present, and future were his focused literary concerns. He did not write of it as satire. He did not write of it as comic. He was a revolutionary. He wrote to change the world. He wrote with little humour. He wrote from a long-time, festering anger, and demands for political change.

This Sydney Theatre Company production is/was created by Australian artists, seemingly, not alert, or even imaginatively engaged, with any empathy, for the origins of Gorky's Russian peoples and concerns, and were, rather, creating, as Australians of 2014, a CHILDREN OF THE RELAXED AND COMFORTABLE. A production of THE CHILDREN OF THE SUN where all of Gorky's urgent concerns are made to appear ridiculous, funny, a satiric lampoon of humanity. It, created from a cultural experience that cares nothing, not even from studied secondary resources, of suffering and persecution, and the yearning that provokes the possibility of one's own death for demanding, claiming basic human rights. It comes from artists who seem to have no imagination or the courage to own such truths. From a culture where our societal crises are laughable and are, seemingly, easily brushed aside or, even worse ignored, denied. Artists in ignorance or denial of local and world dilemmas. Kidults, indeed. Blind, and protected from life realities, with a comic (missionary) zeal to protect us- their comrades/audience - from seeing them either.

To be fair:

Are we being warned, with the production of this text that "You'll laugh on the other side of your face, soon enough."? " Ignore our parable and you'll be sorry."?
Well, (let me think) .... No, no (thinking further) ... Oh, Oh, Oh, (is it a penny dropping, Kevin?), could this possibly be what Mr Upton has written in this adaptation of the original Gorky? Could this possibly be what Mr Williams has Directed?

Well ... if so, no ... NO ... no, not with my audience, who laughed loudly and applauded satisfactorily, and seemed to leave with no serious contemplation: "there but for the grace of god, and living in the lucky country, good old Australia, go I." No,it had been definitely, a lovely afternoon's distraction, entertainment. "Let's have a cool pinot gris and look at that fabulous, harbour view." No serious paralleling of the play to their comfortable lives, for sure.

Hmm!

Well, (then let Kevin's dropping penny become a bullet) if that is so, the Adaptor and Director do Gorky's name an injustice, and totally mis-led me as to what to expect in the Drama Theatre. Gorky was the writer wasn't he? It said so on the title page. Then where was Gorky's intended play?

The last Gorky play to be seen in Sydney, professionally, was an adaptation by Jonathan Gavin, of Gorky's fierce, VASSA ZHELEZNOVA, re-titled, THE BUSINESS, and it, too, suffered from the comic leanings of the Australian theatre artist when confronted with serious, difficult statements of social behaviours and injustice. Satire, comic release, became its atmosphere to weather the savagery of the original. This relaxed and comfortable approach to real world issues, on our stages, may have had its apotheosis, in the shocking usage of Gogol's great satire, THE GOVERNMENT INSPECTOR, at Belvoir this year, by Simon Stone, that reduced the action and intentions of that critical work of the Romanov dynasty, to that of Aussie actors having a 'hissy-fit' because their ambitions have been thwarted by the no-show of a director! Hipster Gorky, Hipster Gogol and now Hipster Gorky, again! KIDULTS, all! CHILDREN OF THE AUSSIE SUN in an idyllic playground, a toy shop of STC privileges and resources. Play, play, laugh, laugh away your woes. Keep fiddling while Rome burns.

That all three plays are Russian, I wonder, is it an example of art imitating life, an artistic 'shirt fronting' of Putin (Russia), by these artists, in solidarity with our eloquent leader and his Team Australia?

Toby Truslove, as Protasov, the scientist, appeared to have no sense of the study of Chemistry, or the belief in the ideological soundness and future value of his work - it was the new societal transformative science of the age. Rather we saw a comic representation of an amateur dabbling in scientific investigation who was also a social dimwit, entirely devoid of any virtues that one could comprehend to justify why his wife, Yelena (Justine Clarke), stayed with him. - except, perhaps, his youthful looks! - be careful they are fleeting! We were given a deliberate cartoon reading to fit the Adaptor and Director's view that the society presented in this play was made up of 'kidults', which was preposterously, re-enforced with the last image in this production where, Mr Truslove's Protasov fell to his knees crying for his Nanny, in response to the riot surrounding his home and laboratory. It is an ending entirely forced by Mr Upton - not remotely what Gorky had written or intended. Mr Truslove's metier seemed more comfortable in his satirical work in the recent ABC comedy UTOPIA, than here, in the realist observation of Gorky's metaphoric children.

The performances truest to the Gorky ideas were those from the actors with roles that had been textually (or, in stage time) shrunken by Mr Upton and Williams, and they did seem to glimmer, it seemed to me, with their true dramaturgical function, but had not the production traction to enforce what they understood Gorky was about: Valerie Bader as the Nanny/housekeeper; Yure Kovich, saddled with the difficulty of representing as one man, three characters and ideas written by Gorky, as Yegor; Julia Ohannessian as Avdotya, the long-suffering peasant servant.

Jacqueline Mckenzie, usually such an insightful (and reliable actor) in her creation of Liza (the "Cassandra" of the author's voice), had reduced Liza to an hysteric (I longed to inform, shout out to Liza, that there was a cure for such behaviour investigated by her avatar, Ms Mckenzie, in Sarah Ruhl's IN THE NEXT ROOM, or THE VIBRATOR PLAY), an hysteric of personal disfunction rather than the clairvoyant of the greater social inequities, injustices that was driving her bigger world to inevitable upheaval, even revolution, and hence, her psychological stress and her uneaseful behaviour. Liza's 'hysteria' should be motivated, created, not from personal dilemmas, but by a super sensitive intuition to the social/worldly dilemmas. Liza, is a character type that appears as a core tool in the dramaturgy of much of Gorky's play literature, not reiterated here by either actor, or, her Director.

Puzzling, was one's wrestle with the story/function of the character, Boris, which Chris Ryan gave us. But, then, Mr Ryan did not have much help from some of the performances about him that should, under better circumstances, have helped to define Boris more (e.g. his relationship to his sister, Melaniya - the over-the-top Ms Thomson, a difficult offer to utilise well; or to Protasov - the befuddled Mr Truslove, a relative comic flummery, of not much substance to build with.) In an ensemble play all the pieces need to be on the same page of style and intention, one can't do it by oneself. So, unusually, the work of Mr Ryan was, relatively, invisible of function or intention. Of the other actors: James Bell, Jay Laga'aia, Contessa Trefone, all gave what they could in the hurly burly of the farcical tone that Mr Williams seemed to be driving for, so that often, what was left of the Gorky 'pull' in this adaptation, left them suspended in the space between two very different stools/schools of intention.

So, it is was with some amazement, and great admiration that Justine Clarke, as Yelena, the object of many affections in the play, managed, particularly in the final act of the play, to create a sustaining and credible human being serving Maxim Gorky well. Ms Clarke is a remarkable actor, indeed.

THE CHILDREN OF THE SUN is a good play, and even in this adaptation and production one could apprehend that. But, it is not Gorky's best by any means. I would have thought that with a statistic that reveals that 2.7 million Australians are living below the poverty line, today, that Gorky's masterpiece, THE LOWER DEPTHS, might be a more relevant play to present. (it hasn't been seen in Sydney since the Old Tote Company presented it in 1977, Directed by Liviu Culei. It winning the National Critic's Award for that year.) There has never been a professional production of SUMMERFOLK, in Sydney (Australia?) Gorky's other great play - but then, it has a cast of some 23, not likely to be attempted by the best subsidised company in Australia, too costly, and, I guess, we have, conveniently, available a ready made adaptation of THE CHILDREN OF THE SUN, by our Artistic Director, commissioned for another city, a different country. A city by the way, relatively, well versed in the works of Gorky, and so has a context for the play, the adaptation and the production. I suppose we couldn't commission new versions of these better and more relevant plays for Sydney, could we?

Oh, well, at least we can say we saw it, a play called CHILDREN OF THE SUN, by Maxim Gorky. However, you will be surprised when you read a contemporary translation of the original, you will be wondering "What did I, actually, see?" Sadly, we saw a reflection of an Australian culture that celebrates its good geographical luck, to be so far away from the heat of history (except when those boats kept/keep, arriving.) From a culture that can comfortably satirise other's difficulties and ignore the plight of refugees, contemporary revolutions and the collateral effects of such.

Have a laugh. Have another pinot gris, and don't disturb yourself. Maybe, the 'kidults' will grow into adults. Here's hoping.

THE FOX AND THE FREEDOM FIGHTERS is a new Australian work, co-written by Rhonda Dixon-Grovenor and Alana Valentine.

Charles "Chicka" Dixon was a leading Indigenous activist. Born in 1928, his role as activist began to find focus during the preparation of the 1967 Australia Referendum, that amended the constitution to include Aboriginal people in the census and allow the Commonwealth to create laws for them; and, among much else, in 1970, he organised the Aboriginal Legal Service in Redfern; he was a co-founder of the Tent Embassy in Canberra in 1972; travelled with an Indigenous delegation to China; was of interest to the authorities at ASIO. I knew him as an occasional guest at the National Institute of Dramatic Art, when he was invited by John Clark, the then Director of the Institution, to meet (and educate) the young artists of the future. He was always an inspirational talker, robust in sprit and knock-em-out frankness. I learnt never to miss the opportunity to meet and hear him. He passed in 2010. His career to fight for basic human rights and justice for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander People is truly awesome, in the proper sense of that word, or, as his people, today, might say "truly deadly."

Two members of Mr Dixon's family, Rhonda Dixon-Grovenor, daughter, and granddaughter, Nadeena Dixon, in 2012, having gathered a mountainous collection of research material about their hero-figure, their elder, their father, grandfather, began searching for a way to organise a performance piece to celebrate Chicka's contribution to Indigenous history, Australian history. They were joined in that process, in Track 8, Carriageworks, by the International prizewinning playwright, Alana Valentine (the latest prize being the 2014, BBC International Radio Writing Competition, for THE RAVEN) who while working with them asked, "What were you doing while Chicka was changing the world?"

That, became the shaping catalyst to THE FOX AND THE FREEDOM FIGHTERS. They, at first, did not believe that anyone would be interested in the family's story, but through the progressive support workshops at Performance Space, discovered, that the mingling of Chicka's achievements, with their own, was something that the audience wanted to hear, as it is noted in the program, that

…people did want to hear our version, did want to understand what the costs, what the experience, what the sacrifices were for the family of (this) in-demand social activist. ... (So) THE FOX AND THE FREEDOM FIGHTERS is the story of an inestimably great man, a visionary hero and social pioneer. (but also) We hope that the unique perspective of hearing that story from his descendants makes it shockingly real and achingly profound, a vivid insight into the human cost of the freedoms and self-determination that were so hard won.

The over-arching theme to this work can be summed up in the words of Rhonda Dixon-Grovenor:

Don't you for a minute think that there isn't a cost to every single moment of this fight for freedom. It doesn't come without a cost.

Director, Liza-Mare Syron, (Brian Syron, now, there is another name that our cultural memories should recall) has staged and wrought, gently, but with true assurance, from archival film and images, and contemporary interview with the actors (Film Makers and Editors: Amanda King and Fabio Cavadini), a verbal, verbatim telling with these two artists, of the lived and remembered history of the era of Chicka Dixon's world - all of it, ALL, not just the politically important historical parts, but the intimate, personal parts, as well. It is interwoven with song (Nadeena Dixon in transfixing voice), the experience disguised in the ambience of what, dramaturgically, appears to be a simple chat with the guests, the acknowledged audience, in their living room, home. There is much humour, sadness, nostalgia, gripping facts, pride and power in the cumulative 'education' that these women give the audience.

The naive community-theatrical skills of the performers is buoyed by the sheer greatness of their authenticity. One is drawn into a mesmeric trance of understanding, compassion and admiration of their courage to have lived their lives, and now to, simply, tell the unadorned truth of the human cost that activism for change can demand, and at the same time, respecting and mightily honouring their father - a figure, who, contemporaneously is barely remembered in the consciousness of our Australian identity - in 1983, after all, Charles "Chicka" Dixon was named the first Aboriginal of the Year. Who remembers, except the family? One day, maybe, he may be celebrated in memory within our historical context as interestingly, and as significant, important, as say, Gandi is to his people, as Martin Luther King is to his. THE FOX AND THE FREEDOM FIGHTERS is a work from our Indigenous sisters that catches one agape, at its pure honesty and unadorned truths. One is truly moved and enhanced.

THE FOX ANDTHE FREEDOM FIGHTERS, should be seen around the country, perhaps, around the world. One hopes that the major gatekeepers of our Theatre culture have it in its support and must present lists. Hope that the Balnaves Foundation have absorbed this play and production. Hope that the theatre artist, speech maker, essay writer and Indigenous culture champion, Wesley Enoch, made the effort to see this work, especially after his disappointing, but well meaning production, BLACK DIGGERS, that is doing the Festival circuit in Australia. Much thanks to the women artists who have created this work: Rhonda Dixon-Grovenor, Nadeena Dixon, Alana Valentine, and Liza-Mare Syron. Support from Neil Simpson (Lighting), Phil Downing (Composer and Sound Design) and co-Designers, Nadeena Dixon and Clare Britton. Performance Space, too, take a bow.

Friday, November 28, 2014

THE WORST KEPT SECRETS, is a new Australian play, by a newish writer, Thomas De Angelis. His other play, JACK KILLED JACK was written in 2012, as part of the Sydney Fringe Festival. I am going to write fulsomely about this small production, because I believe there is some playwriting promise, here. It is too rare not to agonise over.

A husband and wife political team, he, now, an ex-State Premier, George Steeper (Rhett Walton), and his behind-the-scenes mover-and-shaker, Annie, (Sonia Todd), besides, having a rancorously volatile personal relationship, find that they are shaping up for a 'race' for a public persona renewal as leaders on an influential advisory committee. They have two sons who have fled the 'battle' zone of their parents relationship to create their own lives: Joseph, a modestly achieving fledgling lawyer (Sam Boneham), who has an ambitious journalist girlfriend, Rosie (Lauren Pegus) - who is having an opportunistic secret 'affair' with George, whilst 'fishing' to write his memoir - and Henry (Matthew Morrow), the spoilt 'wastrel'-son, finding study too boring and is instead dealing, very lucratively, in hard drugs, whilst juggling a girlfriend (Paige Leacey) who is wanting more from him than he is prepared to give to their relationship. The play is, mostly, set in the comfortable home of the parents.

As you can read, the characters, the social milieu, and the bourgeois concerns and resultant conflicts, of the play, are familiar ones for an Australian audience, and any number of playwrights can be conjured to have being a likely role model for this young playwright's inspiration. And, the one that springs, mostly, to mind, is that of the Grand Master himself, David Williamson. If that is so, Mr De Angelis proves himself a diligent and talented apprentice. He has the security of character, form and structure, down pat, with enough social 'zinger' dialogue going, to keep an audience moderately entertained.

Promising, indeed, although, just how funny is hard drug dealing? And, how likely is it that it is not an issue that ought to be a threat to the futures of his parents, two politicians, pursuing public office? Why does Mr De Angelis introduce that aspect of character and plot and not explore it? It is there just for laughs, it seems, as it had no dramatic influence to the storytelling, and logically, ought to have, don't you think? For it is, otherwise, a de-railing McGuffin, for the audience, that is fairly suspect in a (writer's) ethical intention. Mr De Angelis is a graduate with an Arts/Law degree, so I thought he would know, how serious a factor Henry's life choice would be in this 24 hour news cycle world that is a relevant and 'scary' factor in contemporary Australian life! Certainly, Annie Steeper, Henry, the Drug Dealer's mum, would be, should be, very alarmed about the possible consequences to her ambitions. Let alone Dad, the ex-Premier's future. Hmm!

My big "beef' with the writing, however, is that, the petty personal lives of the characters are at the forefront of the entertainment with the political setting simply a background, as per usual, of most Australian material of this kind - check out the recent Aussie television program PARTY TRICKS, to see what I mean. Cumulatively, culturally then, for me, THE WORST KEPT SECRETS is relatively, predictably, boring in its content and packaging - cliched - making one long for, even more urgently, for an Australian play (Television screenplay) that had the politics in the forefront of our attention, with the personal stuff, in the background. Might I recommend to Mr De Angelis, the series from Denmark called, BORGEN (2011, 2012, 2013), as a more interesting writing masterwork to emulate, to demarcate a difference as a writer on the Australian scene?

Mr De Angelis, besides writing this work, is, also, one of the co- founders of the producing company, BONTOM (Sam Boneham, one of the actors, being the other), for this project - good on them, both, very enterprising and daring - and, also, the Director of the play. Mr De Angelis in his writer's notes talks of his "excellent experience (which was) full of creative collaboration" in putting this production together. I might, then, recommend, further, to Mr De Angelis, that having another collaborator, such as an independent Director, might have been an advantage. I think, there were, perhaps, one, if not, two, too many 'caps' on his head, for the production of this play to reach its potential.

Mr Walton and Ms Todd bring intelligent and experienced judgement and skill to the characters, and with Mr Boneham, capture the stylistic naturalisms necessary to make this genre-material writing work. Their performances are very credible, indeed. Ms Leacey, in a small role does, too. These actors know what kind of play that they are in.

Unfortunately, both, Ms Pegus and Mr Morrow, under the Direction of Mr De Angelis, although demonstrating an intellectual grasp of the material, play in a representational style of performance that is, mostly, comic superficialities and vulgar indications of a revue sketch kind, telegraphing the character and plot points, constantly, and pull the play out of the stability of its, apparent genre, in opposition to that presented by Ms Todd, Mr Walton and Boneham. That Mr De Angelis, allows this to happen, and, also, then pushes the play into a physical 'farcical' expression at its climax, are judgement errors of style, that he, as Director (or, writer?), had not prepared us for. Another collaborator, a third or fourth eye, may have been useful, advantageous, to the production.

If Mr De Angelis looks at the hysteria that the American social and political satirists, Nicky Silver (e.g. PTERODACTYLS -1993; THE LYONS - 2011) and Christopher Durang (BEYOND THERAPY - 1981; WHY TORTURE IS WRONG, AND THE PEOPLE WHO LOVE THEM), can engender from the beginning base of naturalism, he will find models of expertise for what he might have been directing/writing, if, the Williamson/Buzo style were not it.

The Design of the work by Ashley Bell, was simply two full width curtain hangs, one light coloured, one dark (one, badly hung), and minimal furniture and properties - one piece, an ugly, dark poo-coloured cabinet, sat centre stage - an eyesore, indeed - that did not in any way suggest the likely affluence of the people in the play. It demonstrated careless or lazy detailing. It needed more collaborative discussion! The Lighting has no collaborator acknowledged, and was useful if not really designed; the Sound Design by James Anthony-Couples was perfunctory and not very technically sophisticated.

The sum of all this is, is that I was impressed with Mr De Angelis as the writer, but based on this experience in the theatre, I want to encourage, on his next production-enterprise with BONTOM, to collaborate more widely, for luck, that he mentions in his notes, has little to do with quality of result.

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Kevin Jackson

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Mission Statement

This blog developed out of another task. When talking to an IT Savant they suggested that I post these reviews. In doing so it struck me that in the cultural ether there is very little discussion of what is happening. On the weekend (Sunday) I counted 34 pages of sport analysis. Maybe 10 or 12 pages on media celebrity, (centred mainly about Television) and no Arts. No diverse Music discussion. No Art discussion. No Dance or Theatre discussion. So I feel that in writing this blog my intention is to help facilitate constructive Discussion. I see this blog as a CATALYST for real "speak". I see it as some way to RECORD for History's sake events and to INTERPRET them. I hope engagement and exchange evolves. I guess this might be what Marketing might call a Mission Statement.